EIELSON quipucamayoc

Today, the notion of shaman has been codified from the arc of the peoples who preserve the memory and traditions of ancestral cultures. Thus, for the social sciences, the shaman is the character who, within a restricted and concrete environment, acts as a magician, healer, emissary of the gods or as someone with the ability to channel the forces of nature into his body and spirit. This idea -nowadays accepted in almost all academic circles- holds that shamans inhabit the margins of civilization. However, if we decide to expand our concept, the term can also refer to magicians and emissaries who move in the very center of “civilization”. Within industrialized societies special figures have emerged who, in an unusual way, are also shamans. For example, if we accept that the term can be applied to eccentric creators such as the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), then shamans exist and operate in various spaces of modernity.

The term shaman comes from the Tungus languages (Siberia) and means “he who knows”. A shaman is thus a figure who makes predictions, healing practices, invocation to the gods and who, having a special connection with nature, is usually a good advisor on behavior, and therefore has the ability to modify reality or the perception of it. In the specific case of American cultures, shamans have been active members of the community since pre-Hispanic times, focusing mainly on rituals for the harvest and good weather omens.

The poet and visual artist Jorge Eduardo Eielson (1924-2006) -a brilliant and multifaceted figure who was born in Peru and lived in several European countries- was a being who explored creativity and knowledge in an unorthodox way. His interest in universal culture, in avant-garde artistic expressions, as well as in the ancestral knowledge of Peru, opened up a new perspective for him. For this reason, his prolonged exile from his native land responded to a double quest: to his desire to get closer to and nourish himself with international artistic production and, at the same time, to the need to draw his inspiration from Peruvian culture.

With a restless and profound nature, Eielson explored his intellectual gifts by nourishing himself with universal literature, European philosophy, as well as the scientific paradigms of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, he opened a space of spiritual search within Zen Buddhism. This multiple perspective made him become aware of the world and reality from his own experience as an exile and nomad; but this is only a small expression of his versatility, since he found inpoetry and art the last redoubt of an almost extinct humanism, of a humanism that could be practiced in the margins of modern exhibitionism. Thus, poetry was not a simple linguistic exercise or artistic creation, but, in a more complex way, a place of political resistance. Poetry was for Eielson the last redoubt from which one could be a legitimate shaman.

The present musings on shamans and other enigmatic figures are the preamble to the Eielson quipucamayoc exhibition at Travesía Cuatro Gallery in Madrid. With the purpose of celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth, the exhibition will open its doors on March 5 and will cover essential aspects of his life and artistic practice. Under the critical eye of Patrick Charpenel and with the support of the Centro Studi Jorge Eielson in Florence, the exhibition will be organized around three main nuclei: ARCHIVE, where key objects and documents of his life will be displayed; CHAMANISM, which will reveal his vision of mythology and Peruvian civilization; and SUBLIME LOVE, which will address his complex and elusive sexuality. The three cores will review a small spectrum of a dislocated biography and show how Eielson was able to operate as an authentic quipucamayoc: as a new and marginal knot-maker. In the ancient civilizations of Peru, the quipucamayoc were the mathematicians- accountants who kept records of population and crop control, but they were also responsible for recording narratives and myths. Therefore, they had the authority to handle information on administrative and narrative matters. The high title granted to these connoisseurs gave them the role of visionaries, authorized them to handle population and harvest data and, fundamentally, made them qualified hermeneuts to interpret the cosmos.

Eielson quipucamayoc covers important moments of this cultured man who recovers the role of the Latin American shaman, of this man who covers fundamental moments of Peru’s visual culture, of this man who reactivates the production of the South American quipu, of this man who opens a moral perspective to renew the world. It would seem that only a decentralized position -life outside his country of origin- could give him the objectivity to speak with authority about Peru. Jorge Eduardo Eielson is one of the most critical poets and artists of his country and one of the figures who most reproves consumer societies. However, Eielson is not only a critic, but also a healer who reestablishes the order of the cosmos through the containment and release of energy concentrated in a knot.

– Patrick Charpenel